Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Fear of Failure -- Diminished Slightly

By 9am this morning, we had the first result of yesterday's improvement effort. By handing the request out the afternoon before it is due, we gave the project managers more time to decide what they needed. By putting it on a pumpkin-orange paper, it stood out in the pile of papers. With no pleading or cajoling or whining to someone else's boss, all five steel requests were in our department by 8:20am.

What did the group learn? One of the best lessons yet in a sequence of improvement. It started with a clear metric and a standard against which to assess the metric. We saw the metric slipping. We said "Stop, let's change something." Even though we didn't know what to change, the people most affected made the proposals. Then we implemented it. In one day. And the results were evident immediately.